


Intertwined

by Irmolin



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Angst, Blood, Doomed Timelines, Sadstuck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-04
Updated: 2014-06-04
Packaged: 2018-02-03 10:34:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1741559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Irmolin/pseuds/Irmolin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There was nothing heroic about her, nothing noble or proud. </p><p>Dave finds Rose after everything went wrong.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Intertwined

The thick black fog rolled down the cross hatched hills, smoky grim dark tongues spat out of a gaping mouth in the innocent blue sky, and they curled into every corner of the giant chessboard. It would have been pretty, the blackened clouds folding into tentacles, but it was just gross and wrong, and she was in there with her rosy cheeks turned ashen and her words with which she could wrap you round her little finger twisted into growls and sneers of gibberish from deep back her throat. 

John lay broken and bent before you, limbs tangled and sprawled in all the wrong angles in the slowly growing puddle of blood. You couldn't look. 

You inhaled shakily, the cold air sharp against the hot flesh inside your throat, raw from breathing too hard while you ran across the fields. The smell of him, the sweet iron, stung in your flared nostrils, and the still of his silence shook you into smithereens , you can't let Rose see this (but she has, you know she has), you can't let Jade see this (but Jade is dead, she's mince, an awful lump of meat). 

What were you going to do. God, what the hell were you going to do now?   
Rose roared, like an animal. You thought for a moment she sounded like one of the lions you saw on tv as a kid, those majestic bastards with halos of gold crowning their ravishing, amber heads, but you quickly dismissed it, because this was nothing like that. This was awful, a cry of rage, bone-shattering, graceless, the incontrovertible anguish and throes had sunken it's atrocious claws into her once calm and husky voice and shaken her numb of her timbre and soul, and it scared you shitless. 

You had to get to her. 

There was a climb and, oh God, there was so much blood. The rivers were diluted with it, of the pawns and of the soldiers, but you couldn't think of them like that, when you looked into the waters passing by in silence you saw sisters and lovers and bright eyes and mothers, you saw your neighbours and your bro and you saw John and Jade and Rose. You saw courage. And you saw hope. 

You leaped across the squares, your legs going like machinery, sure that you couldn't stop if you tried, and how could you when her howling rattled your every bone? When her screeching was choked with grief and it buried it's teeth in you like a grave robber buries his shovel in the dirt ready to unearth it's hidden treasures, but no gold was buried beneath your skin and you bled out only candy red human blood. You kept running even when all your muscles screamed in protest and the violent jolts of your diaphragm made you wheeze in pain and your feet felt left behind, fallen off far away, happy and free. You ran in through the gates. Up the stairs. Down the corridors. Turned left. Up the stairs. Corridors. Stairs. Stairs. Passed by countless rooms. And what seemed like an infinity of blood. Endless stairs. 

As you began to stagger at last, every step struck you like lighting. She was waiting on the roof. 

(You knew that was a lie, she wasn't waiting for anything, least of all your sorry ass, because what was there left for you now?)

She looked surprisingly... bad. There was nothing heroic about her, nothing noble or proud. She was soaked in blood from head to toe, it had dried and glued her pale bangs together in stiff clusters down her grey forehead and some trailed from mouth and nose down the softly curved chin, and her black clothes were completely soaked in it, colouring the soft fabric a dark burgundy. She had her teeth bared at you in a soundless hiss, her shoulders hunched and her fists balled up convulsively around her wands witch fumed with purple like recently fired pistols, and her black eyes stared you down into a child, back on the rooftop where you had spent half your life, scared and tired. 

"Damn", you said. "The nostalgia be tumbling down on me like a shower of sweet puppet ass". Your voice came out pathetically weak. "Okay, shit, please don't kill me, alright? Rose, just hear me out, please. You can't fix anything with more bloodshed." 

You shook worse than ever, still out of breath and dizzy. 

"Grhyb'ny dnyb" Rose said. Shit girl. Never learned that in school. Her black aura pulsed and curled upward in spirals as she spoke, and her mouth, framed by full dark lips, moved differently around the nonsense she spoke. She used to form them neatly and she would suck them tight against her teeth and smirk coyly, but now her jaw hung slack and her teeth clacked together in an unfamiliar way, the words not properly measured and bitten of by the centimetre by them, but instead she hit them carelessly into each other and gritted them like fangs. 

"Rose, you understand me?" you ask.  
"Cause I don't get a word you're saying so, uh, like blink once for yes and twice for no?" 

"Blrahg nra'gho shtg'ong jg bl'y", she sneers back, and you can almost hear her say "Were I to blink twice by your instructions, would it not assure rather than deny my remaining skills of the English language?" when she a single time flashes you a pair of eyelids heavy with dark makeup. You heaved a heavy sigh of your shoulders and you shivered as a gust of cool wind ruffled your hair and tugged at the hem of her skirt, and yeah, you failed miserably not to think of John. 

"It's just us", you called into the void between the two of you. "We're the only ones left." Rose gave a pained hiss. 

"Hagdv b'gngl", she told you with her face twisted into a horrible grimace. "Rgn'gbyol phr'g uhgj'bsofg hyulkkbnuk'p, rfgy g'bn". 

"Yeah, I know. It's gotta be a doomed timeline, right?" There is no way we'll make it, but you didn't say that. The lump in your throat was growing steadily. "Shit Lalonde, you're the one with the clever backup-plans and now we gotta face the language barrier of every Internet friend's worst nightmares, and google translate went hand in hand with wifi to apocalypse town, ditched us like the gross prom date you take cause she's you stepdad's childhood friend's niece or some dick shit, us being the metaphorical prom date."

"That would be the title our merit has earned us throughout this adventurous obstacle course? How flattering", there was something in the way she jerked her head that said, but through the air traveled only meaningless waves of incomprehensible noise. 

"We're worthy", you agreed. "Hey, you know, we gotta remember the best, don't we? Remember when your mom gave you that fancy ass razor wrapped in the silk pubes of some ancient cavallo romano della Maremma Lazi-whatever and I told you you should shave your head with gratitude but your game was too weak, Lalonde. Remember when Jade got so worked up and distraught because none of us brought guns to school and she scolded our asses. Rose -". 

"Dhvgg", she wheezed. 

You bit your teeth hard when the feeling of hot tears welled up under your eyelids, and you dared not open your mouth or move an inch in fear of them falling down you cheek, escaping your shades, your armour, out in the open for the world to see, because what would you do if this post-apocalypse hell found out that Dave Strider had feelings?

"You know, last time I checked my name still had those things called vowels", you choked out of your clenched jaw. 

Hesitantly you stumbled forward a step on legs that trembled under all the weight you carried, and you felt the one thing keeping you alive was her not backing down and not growling, her feet steady upon the ground as if she'd fight armies to keep it from crumbling. It was a long walk towards her towering figure, and the blood dripped in an unnerving rhythm from her hands and the tip of her nose as you limped closer, weaker and more tired than you thought it was possible to be. The hiccups started as your right foot came down with a hard thud, and they were abrupt and shameless and didn't stop until Rose wrapped you in her blood soaked arms and dug you down in a grave of warmth. 


End file.
